"Soul Surfer," the feature film based on the true story of surfer Bethany Hamilton being attacked by a shark and her journey back to surfing, opened last weekend in the fourth spot on the box office charts - partly a testament to its appealing family-friendly message and a marketing campaign that heavily targeted religious groups.

But even though Hamilton's and her family's faith play key roles in the film, many audiences would be surprised to learn that the question of how to show the family's religion in the film caused huge debate on set.

"I think to get anything in the film was a battle," said Sarah Hill, who was Hamilton's real-life youth group leader at North Shore Christian Church and who was played by Carrie Underwood in the movie. "Basically, what you're doing is you have all these people who want to make a movie about Bethany and they don't know the Lord and they don't have a personal relationship with Jesus. For what we have in the movie it was such a battle."

In one scene, Hill's character is shown counseling Hamilton as she struggles with living as an amputee. She reads from Jeremiah 29:11 " 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.' "

The morning they went to shoot that scene, said Hill, who was on set often, "Twelve producers, me and the director were all sitting at the table and they all are just adamant about the Scripture not being in the movie. And they were saying at least let's not have the reference in it."

"For me it was a hill worth dying on to keep God in the movie," she said.

"Sony (Pictures, the film's producer) was afraid to throw in the word Jesus. They said you can have God but not Jesus. They were worried about that," said Kevin Sorbo, who plays Holt Blanchard, the father of Hamilton's best friend, in "Soul Surfer."

Sorbo said Sony wanted to take out another scene in which Hamilton wakes up the hospital. Her father, played by Dennis Quaid, is shown reading a Bible. He reads to her from Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through him who gives me strength."

Sorbo said the Hamilton family, which was on set every day, fought to keep that in the movie.

"The studios, you can't really fight them," he said. "Hollywood screams for freedom of speech but only if you agree with them. It's a very two-faced industry."

Rich Peluso, the vice president of AFFIRM Films, a division of Sony Pictures, said the studio made no efforts to whitewash the Hamilton family's faith for the movie. He points out that Jesus is mentioned twice in the film and that the family's faith is central to the plot.

On set, he said, "There were certainly lots of discussions," specifically about the inclusion of Hill's character quoting Jeremiah.

"There were some that voiced the opinion that may have made it sound too faith-focused," Peluso said. "The counter-argument was, 'Well, if her character uses those words and doesn't attribute them to the Bible it seems like she's stealing them.' We came to the agreement the best thing to do was to use the Scripture there."

The biggest question the movie's producers were trying to determine was, "How do we have it come off (in a way) that is authentic to the family's faith and doesn't push it too far so that it appears to the viewer to be forced in?" he said. "We didn't want it to appear we were pushing in faith to appeal to the faith community."

The studio made a big push to attract faith leaders to the project, setting up screenings for pastors and ministry leaders. But it's hard to characterize "Soul Surfer" as a Christian movie.

Like the hit movie "The Blind Side," though, "Soul Surfer's" characters are decidedly Christian. The movie opens with Bethany rushing into a beachside church service because the Sunday morning waves were just too good to pass up.

"It's not that it's a Christian movie, it's an American movie," Peluso said.

In 2003, when a tiger shark in Kauai, Hawaii, attacked the 14-year-old Hamilton, the story gripped the nation. Just three weeks after the attack, Hamilton was back in the water learning how to surf with one arm. A year later, she won a national surfing title.

Battles over how to portray religious themes in movies are becoming more common, as Hollywood becomes more open to addressing faith and marketing movies to religious audiences but worries about alienating nonreligious audiences or viewers from other traditions.

“After all the back and forth - and there’s always back and forth - it’s always best to air on the side of authenticity,” said Michael Flaherty, the president of Walden Media, which has helped produced the Chronicles of Narnia franchise and other Christian-themes movies.

“It actually is not in your commercial interest to secularize something like that, people will reject it,” he said of “Soul Surfer.” “People think they are making these decisions to broaden their audience but what they end up doing is narrowing it.”

But Flaherty said he thought that “Soul Surfer” struck the right balance. “To see a movie where she wasn’t talking about her faith…It would have flopped,” he said. “It’s silly to narrow (the family’s faith). It’s like someone saying, ‘Let’s make a movie about Bethany but not talk about surfing.’”

Today, Hamilton is a professional surfer. In 2010 she was ranked 23rd in the world. "The shy kid has gone on to have a legit pro surf career despite her massive physical impairment," Joel Patterson recently wrote in Surfer Magazine, "and, in the process, she's inspired uncountable people struggling against cruel twists of fate."

Hamilton has long been outspoken about her Christian faith and the positive role it played in her recovery.

"We work with a lot of films, but the Hamiltons have to live with this for the rest of their lives, so that balance was important to us," Peluso said. "I think we threaded the needle after a lot of work."

Sorbo and Hill said the Hamilton family was happy with the film in the end.

"Would we have liked to see more, yes of course," Hill said. "The reality is God is so important to Bethany and her family. We had to meet halfway. (The studio) met us halfway and we were able to meet them halfway."

__________________
It is because you chose to get on the mat that makes you the winner. Think about how many people are not on that mat right now. - Luis Sucuri Togno

"The studios, you can't really fight them," he said. "Hollywood screams for freedom of speech but only if you agree with them. It's a very two-faced industry."

Bingo. Certain segments of the left are even trying to rewrite history denying the impact of Judeo-Christian values on our national and cultural heritage. Hollywood is a microcosm of this segment but one with huge power to sway popular sentiment.

Sadly, they are making progress. You know the murders in Afghanistan that took place after that idiot in Florida burned a Koran? A Time Magazine editor said that the Koran was directly the word of God, while the bible was just written by man. The left has swallowed this PC propaganda hook, line and sinker!

Quote:

In the segment Time Magazine’s World Editor Bobby Ghosh told Chuck Todd that the riots and murders perpetrated by Muslims in Afghanistan were obviously understandable because the Koran is apparently more holy than the Christian Bible. Ghosh averred that it’s important to “keep in mind” that the Koran is “not the same as the Bible to Christians.” Why, you might ask? Why it’s because the Koran is “directly the word of God.” On the other hand, the Bible is just a book “written by men.”

The mainstream media - and Hollywood in particular - could care less...because they agree!

For pretty much the same reason that the year in which Mel Gibson released his portrayal of "The Passion of The Christ" during Holy week of that year...no less then THREE Graphic Horror Movies were released at the same time in an attempt to eclipse it.

It wasnt planned in terms of deliberately releasing anti-christian films at the same time, it just happened to happen that way by sheer cooincidence...that is..of course if you believe it WAS cooincidence and not something all together more sinister.

It shouldnt be baffling to you at all. We are at War...We are in hostile country, and the enemy is not afraid to use the heathen as pawns, without their knowledge, to try and get their way. If This Surfer has lots of fans...the last thing Lucifer wants is for those fans to be exposed to Jesus by his story...I doubt that any of those producers were anything more then skeptical that it would sell, or that it would cause offence to someone...but then Demonic Whispers would abound in their heads "are you sure thats markettable?" "Who cares about religion?" "This is not supposed to be a religious film" "dont want to offend all the non Christians who might be watching" Those thoughts invade unprotected and unaware minds that believe they are their own creation. The problem with a great many christians, and its an attitude I see displayed on this forum by those considered most scholarly or Christlike, is their inability to see the ave everyday evil, because in every spiritual matter they are looking for a battle of armageddon type proportions. Whilst Christians remain divided on whether its alright to burn Qurans in protest, or worry about the future invasion of another faith, because they believe thats Evil...they completely miss the director who decides to cut Christ out of a film. They get distracted. They forget how Evil works...Evil is sly, Evil is manipulative, Evil is so close to truth its missleading, Evil is the betrayal by your best friend...its not really the advance of Islam, or the worry of immigration, or how bloody much your evil politicians lie to you. If we could only tackle Evil on the little level, we would then be far more united on a larger level. Every single time, its always the little blessings and the little problems that get missed out...whereas the big and contriversial issues neverend...try looking back over the last four months in this section...and compare the subject matter which gets the silent views...and the subject matter that goes on for thousands of pages...you will find the simple Christian scripture threads practically dead...and those about abortion, or Roman Catholicism, extremely long. You'll find the prayer requests few and far between, you'll see the vast majority of testimonial threads ignored and classed as irrelivent. Even in a place thats quite the church, full of good Christians...we are still showing we have the wrong priorities. So im not suprised that you, and probably a VAST number on this forum, just dont understand why this sorta smallish example is an issue. The war is being fought on a local level. Remember that, your probably hearing voices in your head right now on reading this, "who does he think he is" "shyte stirring as usual" "why dont I reply to him an really embarris him" "this makes me angry" "he's lucky I read such a long post" Ask yourself...why so hostile...why is the first impulse to shut me down...and are you absolutely sure your not taking up demonic suggestions that would like you to ignore the true issues, and blindside you, exactly like they managed to do with the whole Islam thing....or the whole Roman Catholic thing...Thing subjectively, and question EVERY THOUGHT with logic...and its possible to discern what is YOU and what IS NOT